This winter, the buzzing 19-year-old rapper Lil Skies broke down the first verse of one of his 2017 SoundCloud hits, “Signs of Jealousy” in a video that plays a bit like a comedy sketch. For six minutes, the chatty rapper talks in circles as he enthusiastically footnotes a verse that isn’t exactly loaded with cryptic subtext. The line, “First place when I finish the race,” he explains, means “basically, like, I’m just coming in first,” for instance. If anything, he reveals that his lyrics may actually have less meaning than they appear to have on the surface. At one point, he admits that he doesn’t know what an Uncle Tom is, so for him, the term just signifies an old, cranky uncle—a hater, basically.
Lil Skies is grinning the whole time, so it’s hard to tell if he fully appreciates the absurdity of the exercise. He’s so charming and such a good sport about it, though, that you want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Consider the video a litmus test for his music: Either you’re drawn in by his considerable charisma, or flabbergasted by the inanity of half of what comes out of his mouth. Like so many zeitgeist-chasing rappers in his age bracket right now, he invites hard opinions.
It’s lucky that Skies has charisma to spare, because he won’t wow anybody with his originality. He adheres to a “look the part, be the part” mentality, styling himself after SoundCloud rap’s preferred uniform of dreadlocks and face tattoos that may as well read RIYL: Lil Uzi Vert. “I got tattoos on my face, I use that shit as motivation/I can never get a job so for my dream I’m dedicated,” he raps on the opening track of his debut mixtape Life of a Dark Rose, an easygoing 40 minutes of sugary trap and mellow, blissfully hazy vibe music that runs with the sounds of the moment without advancing them much.
Skies doesn’t try to outdo his flashier peers. He isn’t as radical as Lil Pump, a far less competent rapper who makes up for his limitations with raw energy, and although he sings about being a rock star, he doesn’t act the part like Lil Yachty. What he does bring to the table, though, is an agreeable demeanor and a pleasant, sticky-sweet singing voice with shades of Swae Lee, which he’s comfortable enough with to forgo the Auto-Tune that makes so much of this music bleed together. Leaving his voice naked is his smartest and most distinguishing aesthetic choice. It lets Dark Rose breathe in a way most mixtapes in this lane don’t.
The whole project goes down easy, although it only periodically makes good on the promise of its flagship single “Red Roses.” That’s the track where Skies’ melodious flow matches with a perfectly woozy beat and everything clicks (it’s also got the tape’s most Teflon hook: “I got all the drugs in the world that you need/We get high to pass the time, but bitch I ain’t no fiend.”) Only a handful of songs come close to capturing that rush, including “Signs of Jealousy,” another track with the plush ambiance of an opium den, and “The Clique,” a daffy number with more than a trace of Playboi Carti in it. A few more of their caliber could have turned the tape into something genuinely notable, but at least its second-tier material is agreeable enough. Even when Skies isn’t saying much—and he’s rarely saying much—he sounds good doing it.
